Bank of England’s Andy Haldane raises the stakes for UK companies as new speech challenges “shareholder-centric model” July 28, 2015 Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane has stepped up his case for an overhaul of UK corporate governance with the publication of a surprising new speech. In the previously unpublished speech, first delivered at the University of Edinburgh in May, Haldane argues for a “fundamental re-rooting of company law” to challenge the “shareholder-centric company [...]
48 hours in… Malaga June 28, 2015 WHERE TO STAY The fourstar Hotel Molina Lario is discreetly located on a quiet street near the revamped marina and it’s popular with locals for Piscina Lounge, a large rooftop terrace with a swimming pool and grill restaurant that’s open all summer. From £116 per night, hotelmolinalario.com WHERE TO GO The Pompidou Centre has chosen [...]
Finsbury Food buys Just Desserts June 16, 2015 FINSBURY Food Group, which supplies baked goods to leading national coffee shop chains, has completed its acquisition of Just Desserts, saving the group from administration. Tom MacLennan and Geoff Rowley, partners at restructuring firm FRP Advisory, sold Johnstone’s Just Desserts, known for its caramel shortcake, to Finsbury, after the East Kilbride-based company went into administration [...]
What future for forecasts? It’s time economists grappled with the flaws in their models August 12, 2015 Macroeconomic forces influence truly vast sums of money, but the process of analysing them is notoriously unreliable. Economic forecasting is often very wide of the mark and seriously inaccurate just one year ahead. Traditional economic forecasting has conspicuously failed to identify turning points in the economic cycle, while the highly sophisticated DSGE (dynamic stochastic general [...]
Now Gett lets you order Veuve Clicquot champagne in London as it expands on-demand services July 27, 2015 Londoners will be able to order champagne and have a bottle delivered in just 10 minutes with a new service from taxi app Gett. The partnership with Veuve Clicquot will deliver champagne in the same way as ordering a taxi, as Gett explores a tranche of new product deliveries and on-demand services in a bid to [...]
Absolute power: Africa, opera and Oktoberfest with Entrade founder Julien Uhlig September 6, 2015 When I meet Julien Uhlig, he’s in the middle of liaising with the Globe Theatre. They used to have a poster of him from when he sung at the opening of the theatre in 1997, he explains. While in London, he’s keen to get hold of it, if they’ve “still got it lying around”. [...]
Can Arsenal still be champions? Only one other club has lost their first game and won the Premier League August 10, 2015 If Arsenal are to win this season's Premier League they will become just the second club to do so after losing their first game of the season. Read more: Don’t blame Petr Cech for Arsenal loss, says Arsene Wenger The ballooning hype surrounding Arsenal's title credentials was suddenly burst yesterday after an impressive West Ham [...]
How European is the UK? Five charts that show how we differ from the EU in alcohol consumption, living costs and working hours August 18, 2015 It's a potent question at the moment: what does it really mean to be “European”? It turns out our living costs, alcohol consumption and general life satisfaction make the UK the sixth most European country in the EU, according to analytics firm Qlik. In a study pulling together statistics about how we live, work and [...]
Powder White’s co-founder Fraser Ewart-White on ski lifts, Khazakstan and the credit crunch October 4, 2015 When do the best business ideas come to you? For Fraser Ewart-White, it was while swinging on a chair-lift 1500m above sea level. Ewart-White had recently left his job as head of buying at the entertainment company Blockbuster, turning his back on his career to study for an MBA and, among other great ambitions, to [...]
Apple and Shell’s Eurozone bond bonanza: Corporate giants set to cash in on cheaper rates and a lower euro September 11, 2015 Two mammoths of the corporate world, Apple and Shell, stepped on to a crowded bandwagon yesterday when they decided to tap the Eurozone’s bond market to raise billions of euros. More than €53bn (£39bn) have been raised using bonds – interest-paying IOUs – by US companies so far this year, according to figures from [...]